Cethlenn "woke" with no memory of anything since her escape from the Father in the barn. It was early morning, she knew—light came through the bedroom windows in the morning. Whether it was the next day, or a day in the next week, or in the next month, she had no way of knowing. Time was a fluid thing to her in this body; hard to catch, impossible to hold. She wondered if she would ever get used to it.
Rain poured down outside of the little pink-and-white bedroom, framed in the ruffled curtains like an illustration from a child's book. The teddy bears sat on the windowsills, just so—the Step-Mother insisted that they stay in the windowsills because that was where the decorator had placed them. The expensive handcrafted doll-house was filled with porcelain dolls which smiled with sweet insincerity. Everything in the room, in fact, was just so except for Muggles, the terrycloth dog a child had traded to Amanda-Abbey for a small, exquisite porcelain figurine. Amanda-Abbey had smuggled the figurine out of her room for show-and-tell when she was in first grade, and made the deal in the school cafeteria. Muggles looked like the last remaining survivor of a battle between Cethlenn's own folk and the Roman invaders, but he had three advantages none of the other toys in the room had. One, he was eminently huggable. Two, he could be smooshed down to fit in the tiny space between the headboard and the wall, where no one could see him. Therefore, he couldn't be thrown away. And three, he belonged to no one but Amanda, and she could do anything she wanted with him. He did not have to be kept nice—he was not a decorator dog.
Cethlenn liked Muggles, and since she had been left in control of the body, she hid him carefully in the place Amanda-Anne had shown her. Then she slipped into the closet and listened to the sounds from Sharon's room next door. Sharon's television was on, and the chaos of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reverberated off the walls—Saturday noise. Saturn's Day. Proof that the gods-be-damned Romans won. She frowned, briefly wondering at the events that had changed the world from the place she'd known to the place she now found, and wondering what she'd missed. Then she shrugged off her curiosity.
The last thing she remembered from her own life was taking a knife in the gut, and pain. The next moment, she woke in the body of a child a long, long way from home. Even though the devices and customs in this land were alien, it was better being an unhappy child than a woman with a knife in her. Better than being a woman in a world ruled by Romans.
So it was Saturday. Good. Then perhaps it was the next day, and she hadn't lost much this time. She dressed in the closet—clean white cotton underwear, blue jeans and a white t-shirt, white socks and red Halston designer hightops. Dressing was one of the things that had improved greatly since her days with the Druids. Most everything else was worse—but houses were better, and so were clothes.
She debated the merits of going downstairs for breakfast versus staying hungry. She decided against breakfast—there was no telling where the Father might be, or what mood he might be in, and she would just as soon not remind him of Amanda's existence. Instead, she nibbled on cheese crackers bought from another schoolchild, purchased with scavenged and stolen change and carefully hidden.
Thinking of the Father brought back fleeting images from what she suspected had been the night before. She wondered how Amanda-Anne had fared in the barn—and was fearful for the child. She could feel bruises and raw spots that hadn't been there before, and dull aches that she knew the meaning of well enough. It was strange that she should wake up "alone" in the body—usually when she was awake, she was watching Amanda-Abbey or looking over Alice or Anne's shoulder, so to speak. She decided to see if she could find Amanda-Anne, just to check on her. Cethlenn peered cautiously into the walled-off space that Amanda-Anne kept for herself.
At first, what she found puzzled her. Over the wall, there were usually more walls, towering constructs of brick that enclosed and protected the child and kept everything away from her. But the scenery wasn't like that this time. It stretched away in all directions, vast nothingness, gray and empty without ground or sky, without markers—except for the single wall to Cethlenn's back.
It was, the witch realized, a part of the Unformed Plane, although how the child had reached into it and made it a part of herself, Cethlenn had no idea. Initially, she couldn't see the child anywhere. Gradually, however, faint movements off to her left convinced her that something was there.
Cethlenn blended herself with the mist. Her last confrontation with Amanda-Anne on her own territory was still fresh enough in her memory that she had no wish to repeat it. As part of the mist, she floated toward the place where the movement seemed to originate.
Sure enough, Amanda-Anne was there, as happy as that child ever got, contentedly humming some monotonous tune in a minor key. There was no sense of fear or anger—instead, the child gave the impression that she was extremely pleased about something.
Without doing anything that would alert the little girl to her presence, Cethlenn thinned herself out to a fine thread of pure consciousness and eased closer.
The child was working on something, a sort of a doll, perhaps—
Cethlenn focused on the details of the "doll" until she realized what she was looking at. What had seemed innocent child's play became sinister. The "doll" the child made was nothing of the sort. It was a creature formed of fury, molded out of all the darkness in Amanda-Anne's soul—Cethlenn felt the ancient magic like a fire in her chest, felt a horror from memories burned into her centuries before. It was something derived from the magic of the Sidhe—and it must be linked to the visitation by the elven warrior the other day.
The child had copied the elf's magic by watching him, Cethlenn realized. She had discovered how to use the energy of the Unformed Planes to create a thing of order out of the chaos—but what she formed was horrifying. The user of such energies had to take her will and her experience to form the energy into whatever she desired. Cethlenn knew the strength of will it took to do such a thing—and in Amanda-Anne's short life, she had experienced no joy, no love, no laughter—nothing but pain and humiliation and fear and hatred. The thing she molded between her fingers was a misshapen nightmare formed of those emotions, and only those emotions.
Cethlenn watched the child with growing unease, as she played with the stuff of the Unformed Plane as other children would play with dough. She had molded a round, lopsided, lumpy head, rolling it into a rough ball, poking in eyes and a nose and scratching a gash of a mouth with a fingernail. She had formed the body in the way children made dough snakes, and then jammed the head onto it. The arms and legs she created in the same fashion while Cethlenn hovered and watched. When the thing was finished to the child's satisfaction, the little girl stared at her homunculus, all of her concentration and focus centered on it. At first, nothing happened. Then Cethlenn saw that the seams where the arms and legs and head were joined to the body had become thinner and smoother. The arms and legs began to move with weak, spastic shudders, and embryonic digits grew out of the flattened pancakes that were hands and feet. With a sudden flash, the thing's eyes flew open, and glowed with white light. Red fangs sprang from the wide, grinning mouth; a wet, pink tongue darted between them along the lipless rim. Fingers and toes sprouted black, rapierlike claws, and hair sprouted from the round, neckless head as if it had been scribbled there with a pencil.
Amanda-Anne giggled, and the thing giggled back at her: a high, empty, chittering imitation of a little-girl laugh. The child stood her creation on its feet and sent it walking. As it walked, Amanda-Anne stared after it, muttering "Big-ger—big-ger—big-ger," in her whining, nasal voice.
And it grew bigger, and stretched and filled out so fast that it seemed the creature, walking away, grew nearer with every step. First it was tall as a child, then as a small woman, and then as a large man.
The golem shambled off into the mist—and Cethlenn knew that the movement that had led her to Amanda-Anne had come from another of its kind, moving out. Once she knew what to look for, she realized there were more of them moving around in the mist—impossible to mark and count because of their aimless drifting and the perpetual fog of the Unformed Planes, but still . . . many. Cethlenn repressed a moan as, cross-legged and happy, Amanda-Anne began to build yet another one.
Oh, gods, Cethlenn thought. Oh, gods, I've got to get help. She left the child sitting in the gloom making her monsters and singing her discordant songs and shot toward the wall that marked the boundary of Amanda-Anne's space.
Once free from the eerie gloom of the Unformed Planes, Cethlenn discovered she was still alone and in control of the body. She would have worried about the whereabouts of Amanda-Abbey and Amanda-Alice if she had more time, but she had to admit there were things she could accomplish more easily if she didn't have company. Setting up a spell that would summon the Seleighe elves was one of those things.
Cethlenn dug through the closet and found galoshes and a neon-pink raincoat in the back. There was a part of her that dreaded the raincoat as too bright, too much of a beacon for the Father, who might see her moving through the woods and follow her. There was another, more practical part of her that insisted that the Father would want no part of the pouring rain, but that she would surely regret whatever happened if she came back into the house soaked to the skin and dirty from the rain and the woods. She decided on a compromise. She rolled the raincoat up in a ball and stuffed it in her black nylon book-bag. Then she gathered up her kit—cords of various colors, a white candle, one of the Step-Mother's filched cigarette lighters, a bright blue crayon, and a vivid green crayon. Last of all, she looked around the room for a gift. The tales she remembered of elvenfolk, and incidents from her own rare dealings with them, all indicated that they were shifty and tricksy, and a favor asked had to be a favor repaid. She recalled tales from her childhood in the old world—tales of the fey folk who appeared, offering the heart's desire, and desiring in return the one thing a human had that an elf didn't: a soul. She wanted to have something to offer that wouldn't cost her that. Her own continuing existence was proof enough to her that her soul might be a real thing, after all, and worth hanging on to.
Gifting elves was a chancy business by all accounts. Stories indicated that there was rarely anything one was likely to have that the elf didn't already have, and of better quality to boot.
She thought back on her mother's tales. Elves were supposed to be fond of silver and gold, fine fabrics, good music, good drink and good food. She had, quite frankly, nothing to offer in any of those categories—except, she thought with sudden joy, for the giant chocolate bar Amanda-Abbey had bought from one of the band students who was selling them to raise money. The last time Cethlenn had been around, none of the Amandas had yet gotten a chance to eat it. Perhaps it was still intact.
She rummaged through the school pack, and indeed, it was still there. She pulled the blocky gold-wrapped bar out of the pack. It was somewhat wrinkled and battered from its trip home on the bus, and she could tell that it had broken into several fragments, but it was good chocolate. Chocolate, she decided, was a gift worthy of elves, being the other thing about this era that was an improvement over the days with the Druids. And since it was the best she had to offer, she hoped any elves she might draw in would give her credit for effort.
With her pack slung across her shoulders, she opened the window on the right side of her room and scooted out of it. Then she pulled the window closed, slid around until she dangled off the sill by her fingertips, and dropped the final six inches between her feet and the sun-room roof which ran out at right angles from her own room. She scurried like a lizard along the peak of the wet, slippery roof to the very end, then slid down the steeply pitched side and shinnied down the old pecan tree that had grown too close to the house.
From there, she kept under the cover of the evergreen azaleas and the rhododendrons, which took her straight into the woods. The Father hadn't found her escape route yet. She hoped he never would.
Once in the woods, she put on the loud pink raincoat. Her t-shirt wasn't too dirty, she decided. The Step-Mother wouldn't like it, but she wouldn't fuss terribly, either.
Cethlenn beelined for her tree, not following the usual devious route. She didn't have time. Amanda-Anne was still sitting in the Unformed Planes making golems as far as she knew, and that had to be stopped. At least the creatures were still there, but for how long?
Inside the safe barrier of the holly tree's limbs, Cethlenn took out her prizes. She wondered if the spell she'd learned for summoning the Faerie folk was any good anymore—or if it ever had been. After two thousand years or more, maybe the elvenkind wouldn't pay attention to cords and candles. Maybe they preferred the new technologies—the answering machines and car phones of this strange age. That would be unfortunate, the witch thought—because she didn't have access to car phones or answering machines. She just barely had access to cords and candles.
She spread out the cords—one green, one red, one black and one white. From the hollow of the tree, she removed Abbey's forbidden comic books. She placed the candy bar and the candle inside the hollow, wedging the candle in so that it stayed upright. She put the cigarette lighter beside it. She lay the blue and green crayons at the base of the tree.
Preparations made, she offered up a quick, sincere prayer to her Lord and Lady, then took the green cord in hand, and took a slow, deep breath to steady her nerves.
While her fingers worked the cord into the patterns of a Celtic knot, she sang in the Old Tongue:
"Fair folk who have danced in the wood, on the green—
I would call, I would beg, to your king, to your queen,
To you who listen, all unseen,
I bind your ears with my knot of green."
She lay the elaborate knot at the periphery of the tree and pressed it firmly into the dirt with her foot.
Next she took up the black cord, walked one quarter of the way around the tree, and while working the cord into her second pattern, chanted:
"Faerie folk with the strength I lack,
I dare not run, nor dare attack,
But I summon you still, and call you back—
I bind your eyes with my knot of black."
She took up the red cord, walked to the far side of the tree, and with her fingers weaving, sang:
"Fey folk drawn from board and bed,
Gifts I offer to quick and dead,
Think of me kindly whom I have led;
I bind your oath with my cord of red."
At the fourth quarter of the tree, she took up the white cord, and knotted it, and said:
"Old ones come from the long twilight,
Brought to the world of day and night,
I ask your aid to make wrong right;
I bind your power with my cord of white."
When the last knot was in place at the periphery of the tree, she moved back to the candle and lit it.
"Now you who are drawn from your Faerie mound,
And led by my beacon to this ground—
To my circle shall you be bound
Until my knots are all unwound."
She melted the tip of the blue crayon in the flame and drew a protective rune on the palm of her left hand. With the melted tip of the green crayon, she copied the same device on the palm of her right hand. Then she picked up the chocolate bar, huddled on the ground in the incongruous pink raincoat, and began her vigil.
Gwaryon, one of the original settlers of Elfhame Outremer, sat beside Felouen at the side of the Oracular Pool and stared with her at the ominous changes in the curtain of the Unformed that rippled in front of them. He was going through an Egyptian phase, and was at the moment dressed as an ancient pharaoh—from the massive amber scarab pendant around his neck to the draping see-through robes which Felouen found annoyingly pretentious, though she had to admit they showed his body off to good effect. His gold bracelets jangled with a flat heavy sound as he rested his arm around Felouen's shoulders.
She sighed. The effect was so completely—Gwaryon.
"I am grateful," Felouen told him, and rested her head against his shoulder. "Your presence here is a comfort to me—the visions from the Pool these last few days have left me feeling very much alone."
Gwaryon smiled, happily. "You are never alone, dear one. You know I would be with you always if you would say the word."
Felouen sighed and studied the lean, sinuous elf with deep sadness. "I know. And I cannot give you reason to hope in vain for that day to come—it will not. You are dear to me, but you are not the one I desire the most."
Gwaryon laughed and sprawled on his back in the deep, soft grass that grew beside the Pool. "Och, dearest lady, I know that well enough—but still I hope. You cannot extinguish hope, while we both breathe. And even if you don't want me forever, surely a moment's dalliance would relieve your mind of the weight of your duties." His grin broadened, and he arched his eyebrows suggestively.
She tried a smile, but it didn't feel convincing. "Ah, Gwaryon, you are ever considerate of the weight of my burdens," she told him with heavy irony, and absently stroked the hilt of her jeweled dagger. She ceased that, point made, and rested her chin in her cupped hands. Gwaryon's offer of pleasure didn't fit well with her mood. Her worry was even stronger and more pressing than it had been. The red glittering of the Unformed had deepened and seemed angrier, somehow. And at rare intervals, she was almost sure that she could see shapes moving through that fog-shrouded realm of nothing, where no living things should be. Not even the Unseleighe creatures wandered at will through the Unformed—it was more a state of mind than a place, and it welcomed only madness with open arms.
Something was going to happen—she was sure of it. And soon.
"Ho!" Gwaryon whispered. "Feel that?"
Felouen stiffened. "A pull . . ."
He nodded emphatically. "Human magic. I haven't felt its kind since long before you were born."
"I want to go toward it." She glanced at Gwaryon, and her eyes filled with worry.
He nodded. "Once it would have been very dangerous to do so, but now—" He sat up and shook his head. "The knowledge is there, but not the strength. We aren't being summoned by some great mage, nor anyone whose power will overwhelm us. And sometimes these things were calls for help from those who had no other recourse."
Calls for help? "Should we arm ourselves for battle?"
Gwaryon laughed. "I would guess that the human who dug that ancient spell out of an old tome doesn't even suspect that it is real—much less that we exist. Such a human won't be a threat to us. Let's just go and take a look."
A stirring in the forces she had woven into her net of hopes roused her from her trance of concentration. Cethlenn turned from her spell-making to find herself staring into the faces of two of the Old Folk, who were studying her with mixed bemusement and disbelief.
Well, she thought, mouth agape, At least I know it still works.
Lianne McCormick was keeping a wary eye on her companions, when both of them suddenly started, as if they had heard something she couldn't. D.D., perched on Rhellen's sumptuous back seat, cocked her head to one side, birdlike. "Oh, my," she whispered. "Maclyn, my love, my darlin' boy, do you feel that?"
Maclyn ground his teeth audibly. "All over, Mother. It's coming from out where we're heading, more or less."
She looked grim. "And a good thing, too. I think otherwise we wouldn't be able to go there—it would pull us to wherever it was."
"What are you two talking about?" Lianne asked.
D.D. rubbed both temples with her knuckles, as if she had a headache. "Mac feels something tugging at him, but he isn't old enough to recognize what it is—I haven't felt this particular sensation in so many years, I would have thought I'd forgotten what it was. And I've never felt it on this side of the ocean. I thought such summonings were left behind in the Old Country."
"Summonings?" Lianne asked, startled.
D.D. nodded. "Oh, aye. Someone has cast a spell to draw and bind the elvenkind. Such binding spells were known to a few priestesses and witches in the Old Country long ago, and to even fewer mages—but those who were willing to demand our presence were rare. We grew weary of being drawn into the world of Cold Iron against our wills, and we began to attack first and ask questions later. It took only a few toasted humans before that spell fell out of favor."
Lianne rested her head against Rhellen's door. She stared at the neat subdivisions they drove past, and at the stands of tall pines and the orderly young rows of cotton and soybeans that grew in the square, predictable fields. "Witches," she muttered, speaking to no one but herself. "And spells. Elves and telekinesis. Magic. Did I mention that I never cared about magic when I was growing up? Did I ever say that I was the kid who didn't give a damn about unicorns? I like science: nuclear physics, math, chemistry. I always liked the world when it was rational. Didn't I make that clear?"
D.D. looked at her son with concern.
Maclyn shrugged. "She's had several difficult days. She'll snap out of it."
"I thought I was dating a human," Lianne said, as Maclyn turned the Chevy down the dirt road that paralleled the Kendrick's property. "I thought this was a guy I might potentially take home to meet my folks."
"This is bothering you, isn't it, babe?" Mac asked, flippantly.
Lianne quit talking to the four winds and centered her attention on Mac. She glowered at him with disbelieving eyes. "No-o-o-o-o!" she drawled. "Having elves screw with my brain is just my favorite thing ever. Having my worldview and all of science refuted in two days' time has done wonders for my morale. You ought to try it sometime."
"You're welcome to keep thinking that the world is a nice, logical, rational, safe place," Maclyn said with a helpful smile. "You'll be wrong, but that hasn't stopped anyone else who thinks the same way."
Lianne growled something profoundly obscene, and Maclyn and Dierdre both laughed.
"If it makes you feel better, Lianne, magic works by laws, too. Think of it as another kind of science you don't know yet."
Lianne fumed.
Maclyn drove Rhellen up to the very edge of the woods, out of sight of the road or any houses. Behind them was a fallow field, standing tall with weeds. Maclyn got out of the car, and Lianne slid out after him.
"She would be safer here with Rhellen," D.D. said, as if Lianne wasn't there. Lianne hated being talked around.
"I probably would be," Lianne agreed, studying the woman who would probably not end up as her mother-in-law. "But I don't intend to stay here with the car—with Rhellen."
"Only until we see who has summoned us," D.D. said, placatingly. "Then you can join us and help us find the wee child's home."
"No thanks. I'd like to see that myself." Lianne pulled her gray mackintosh tight, noticing that the rain fell all around her but not on her. The cold and the damp still blew straight through her, and the low keening of the wind gnawed at her nerves. Great day for this sort of thing, she decided. Make a believer out of even the staunchest pragmatist. Wind sounds like a banshee, and I think I could see ghosts in broad daylight on a day like this.
She had to remind herself that this was an attempt to find information that would rescue an abused kid—not a midday ghost hunt. Amanda needs help, she reminded herself. But it made her nervous that Mac and D.D. were being drawn against their will toward something that called from the same direction as Amanda's home. Could that bastard of a father be summoning them?
Bad thought, Li. Very bad thought.
Lianne watched the two of them walk, faces grim and tense, ducking around the dripping greenery—scrub oak and sassafras and willow; blackberry bramble, grapevine and kudzu—that made up this part of the woods. She walked a step behind them, staying quiet. They did magic, and this was something that frightened them. She was out of her element, way out of her area of experience, much less expertise. It was as if there was something out there that didn't want them to help Amanda and was trying to prevent them from interfering. That made her profoundly nervous.
Cethlenn stood with her back pressed against the trunk of the tree, the chocolate bar in her outstretched hand. Though it still rained all around her, no rain fell on her, nor did any fall on her—guests. She stared at the two elves, the woman in clothing similar to that which elves had worn in her earlier life—the man in a foreign-looking gown of some gorgeous filmy material she would have killed for once upon a time, and covered with gem-crusted gold jewelry.
"Child," the male elf said, "the last time I heard that bit of doggerel was a good two thousand years before you were born. And it had become uncommon then."
The female elf shook her head. "I didn't realize anyone could summon us."
Cethlenn shivered. She would have preferred to have been less of a novelty. She held out the chocolate bar and waggled it a bit. "I gift thee, lord and lady."
The female—one with the look of a warrior about her—studied the proffered bar, and shuddered. "Oooh, chocolate. Loaded with caffeine, and you wouldn't believe the empty calories in that thing."
"Summoning price has gone down a bit since the old days, Felouen," the male muttered with dry amusement. "It used to be that they greeted us with baskets of gold and jewels and fine silks and rare spices. But then we needed a bit more placating back then—too many calls for no good reason. No, child," the elven male added. "We won't take your candy. There is another gift we will require instead, for having come when you called us forth."
Och, and there goes my soul, Cethlenn thought with dismay.
Her face evidently mirrored her fear, for the female elf said, "We won't hurt you. We don't hurt children."
The strangely dressed male looked into Cethlenn's eyes and said, "That isn't what she's afraid of—oh, this is rich. Just rich. They used to think we stole souls, and that's what she is afraid of. It is! Look at her—that's exactly what she was expecting." He grinned at the witch in the child's body, and said, "Kid, if you had a really hot 486 with a VGA monitor, a solid keyboard, and a ton of software, I'd steal that in a heartbeat. But you can keep your soul. I would like to know where you found that old string-and-knot song and dance."
Cethlenn could hardly believe her ears—or her luck. "That's all?"
The elf nodded. "That's my trade. Information for our arrival."
Cethlenn smiled, confidently. "I learned it from the MacLurrie's first witch, when I earned my place as one of his advisors."
The elves stared at each other, and the female elf mouthed the name "MacLurrie?"
"An old warrior and rake who was a bit before your time, child," the male elf said, and nodded to his female companion. "He was a bit before her time. I remember the young boaster well enough, but I can't imagine how you could."
Cethlenn drew herself up as tall as she could stand—which was not very—and said, proudly, "I am Cethlenn, daughter of Martis and witch at MacLurrie's circle. I was not always this child, though how I came to be here, I know not."
The male's brow creased with thought, and he absently played with a great beetle of amber that hung about his neck. "Cethlenn . . . hmm. I vaguely recall a charming, dark-eyed creature named Cethlenn from around the time of the battles of the Gauls and the Gaels—as a matter of fact, now that I think of it, she was sharing her favors between MacLurrie's bastard son and one of our folk. Bryothan, was it? Or Prydwyn?
"Eodain was my other suitor," Cethlenn corrected. "Eodain. But he wasn't elven."
"Eodain . . . Eodain . . . It's been so long, I've forgotten." He stared off into space, while his long, graceful fingers twined in the many layers of his gold jewelry. "By Oberon's steed, girl, I believe you're right. It . . . was . . ." His eyes narrowed and fixed on Cethlenn, and he glared at her from beneath lowered brows. "Eodain. Who was one of our folk, although you certainly couldn't expect him to tell a mortal like yourself that. No tales of his little tryst were barded about—it was mere court gossip, which means—"
"That she either made an extraordinarily lucky guess, or she is what she says." The one called Felouen frowned.
The male gave his companion a somber look. "Then the price is met and our oath is bound."
"No!" Felouen snapped. "If this is not a child but a witch of the Old Country, then she has not called us in idle sport. She would have known the dangers. No matter how unlikely, and no matter how innocent she seems, she is a danger to us. You stay, I'm leaving."
The elven woman shimmered, but stayed solidly within the child's hiding place. She made another obvious attempt to leave, and when that, too, failed, she turned on her companion with a snarl. "We're trapped here, Gwaryon!"
The male elf shrugged. "She means us no harm."
But there was veiled panic in the female's expression. "I don't care! I want out of here!"
Gwaryon looked at Cethlenn, and his face grew stern. "I also dislike this spell that holds us here."
There was no point in acting contrite. Not with those—things—out there, shambling around in the Unformed Planes. "I've met your price. Besides, 'twas the only way I knew of callin' the Fair Folk," Cethlenn said. "I need help. I am not the only one in this child, you see. . . ."
Cethlenn's voice faltered in mid-sentence, and a furious presence pushed her back and usurped her control of the body. :No!: Amanda-Anne screeched to the ancient witch. :You . . . c-c-c-can't . . . tell . . . them about . . . us!:
:They could help,: Cethlenn said, soothingly. :They could take you away from the Father.:
But Amanda-Anne was not about to be soothed. :No-o-o-o! Stopping . . . is . . . not helping! They . . . w-w-w-would . . . only call us . . . bad girl. Make us . . . weak again. They would take . . . our m-m-m-magic.:
:No, Anne,: Cethlenn told the child, her thoughts pleading. :Let them help you. They can take you away from him, make the bad things go away—they can hide you someplace safe.:
Amanda-Anne had quit listening. She looked at the elves who were held—trapped—in the circle, and her voice rose in a shrill sing-song. "I m-m-m-made me . . . gletchells and . . . sl-sl-slinketts . . . and m-m-m-morrow-w-waries . . . and . . . f-fulges. F-f-friends of me . . . friends . . . of me. And . . . you . . . w-w-want to hurt my . . . f-f-friends," she wailed on a rising note.
The elves stared at each other, amazement and confusion written clearly on their faces. Oh, Lord, Cethlenn thought. What have I done?
Amanda-Anne knelt in the dirt, and rubbed her fingers across Mommy's green bead on its new gold bracelet. Without words, she summoned her "friends" and brought them through the bead and out into the charmed circle that was Amanda-Abbey's safe place.
The homunculi spewed into the haven under the holly tree in a cloud of black smoke, giggling as they took solid form. Their wide, grinning mouths split open, and their fangs gleamed red. They shambled and staggered on uneven legs, ducking gracelessly under the sheltering boughs of the holly. Their scimitar fingers grasped toward the elves.
Amanda-Anne waited until five of her pets were through the bead-gate. Then, laughing, she slipped out of the tree-shelter, and darted home.
To Felouen, her arrival in the child's spelled circle had been discomfiting. The spell was carefully wrought, so that her eyes saw nothing but the world inside of the magical boundaries, and her ears heard nothing but the sounds of the child's voice and the few creakings that the old holly tree made. Its branches blew in a wind she knew to be present, but neither felt nor heard. Her world narrowed to the tree itself, which soared upward, its dark, leathery leaves contrasted with the brilliant light green of new spring growth, and with the startling reds of the few remaining berries not yet picked away by the birds. And in the center of the circle, the child: frail, blond, brown-eyed, with skinny arms and legs covered by wet clothes, who stared at her with awe—but not surprise. All else was hidden in the obscuring darkness of the spell. Her senses and her magic were bound—she could not leave. She was trapped—by a child who, in all sincerity, said that she was a witch from the Old Country.
And then the witch in the child's body changed—no, change was not the precise word. The witch, Cethlenn, disappeared, or was abducted, and was replaced by someone—terrible. Felouen felt the newcomer, the child—for this one was a child—arrive, full of rage and fear and confusion. This green-eyed human, who was terrified of the elves without knowing fully what they were, knew only that she wanted to hurt them. Wanted to hurt everything. Felouen felt her slashing, unfocused rage like a blow to the face, sensed her hatred and wondered, in the brief instant before the child brought forth her monsters, what could have twisted the youngling in such horrible and deadly ways.
After that, she didn't have time to wonder about anything.
It was not the vision from the Oracular Pool—Felouen wasn't defending the Elfhame Outremer grove. She and Gwaryon fought to save their own lives. There were no armies of elvenkin at her sides; but neither were there armies of the great shambling things.
Her own situation, however, was no less grave than the vision of the Pool.
The Pool had made a true showing of the monsters. They were just as malformed and frighteningly senseless as they had appeared in the glassy surface of the water—and the ratio by which they outnumbered the elves was as bad.
Felouen regretted Gwaryon's casual response to the summons and her own willingness to follow along. Now, between the two of them and the child's nightmares-made-real were only two little silver elven-blades, knives pitifully small when compared to the claws of their opponents. Felouen and Gwaryon scrambled up the trunk of the tree into its upper limbs, hoping at best to escape the monsters' talons completely, and at very worst for a defensible place in which to make their stand.
Unfortunately, the things could climb—and they did. Their glowing, pupilless white eyes gleamed in the pouring rain, and their high-pitched and horribly childlike giggles carried over the pounding rain and the low moans of the wind. They were slow climbers and clumsy, but deliberate, and they seemed to stick to the tree as they moved upward.
The leading monster reached a point just under Felouen's ankles. It screeched with sudden wild intensity and slashed out at her legs. Its talons ripped through the sturdy leather of her boots as if it was silk, and dragged into her flesh. Felouen cried out once at the sharp stab of pain and pulled her feet higher. Gwaryon threw his knife, and Felouen saw the little blade bury itself in the pallid thing's eye.
The monster grabbed for the knife with both hands, lost its balance, and fell. Even falling, it giggled, until the noise was cut short by the thud as it hit the ground.
Felouen slashed at the next golem within reach. The blade cut deeply and lopped off three of its fingers, but the wound didn't bleed and the creature showed no signs of pain. It kept climbing, and she was forced to climb still higher, onto a weak, green branch that bent alarmingly under her weight. The golem stopped and looked up at her, and its giggling became shriller. It grasped the branch to which she clung and began rocking it back and forth.
"Stop it!" she screamed. "Damn you!"
Beneath her and to one side, Gwaryon was fighting his own battle. He had wedged himself tightly into a crotch of a sturdy branch and was kicking the monsters in the head as soon as they were within reach. His legs were bloody ribbons, and his sandal-clad feet were unrecognizable as feet. His skin, at least that which wasn't bloody, was gray. Felouen saw the beads of pain-sweat standing out on his forehead—but his face never lost its determination. She watched one golem fall to the ground as Gwaryon kicked it loose from its perch. It hit heavily, lay still for a moment—then rose, and begin its climb back up the tree. It had already been replaced by the next monster.
Felouen realized with horror it was the one that had taken Gwaryon's knife in its eye. They're unkillable, she thought with sudden, overwhelming despair, and clung tighter to her branch. The monster beneath her kept rocking it, swinging it in faster and further arcs. Its hysterical laughter never stopped.
"Stop it! Damn you!" someone screamed from ahead of them, and the sounds of a desperate struggle and a bloodcurdling chittering made the forest sound like something out of a horror story. In front of her, Maclyn apparently heard it, too. He started to run. "Weapons and armor," he told his mother. Silver swords materialized in their hands, and chased and enameled armor appeared around them.
God, I wish I could do that, Lianne thought, breaking into a run behind them.
They were faster than she was. They ran effortlessly, appearing to do no more than jog—yet they pulled away from her at an impossible rate. She ran flat out, putting everything she had into the effort, yet she fell further and further behind. The two elves darted through a thicket without slowing, and she stopped completely to disentangle herself from the inch-long thorns that held her clothes in fast embrace.
By the time she was out of the thicket, the elves had disappeared from sight, but she still heard the fighting, and the—other noises. The sounds came from the other side of the small hill she was climbing. She slowed to a trot, by necessity picking her route more carefully than the elves had. She wondered now what in hell she was doing out here. What good was she, an unarmed human, in a fight where at least two of the combatants were well-armed and armored elves? She suspected she would be more of a liability—someone who would end up needing to be rescued. By the time she'd reached the crest of the hill, she had decided to find a safe spot in which to wait out the fight.
Close up, it sounded even worse. Unfortunately, she couldn't see much. The holly's leaves blocked most of her view, but a steady green glow from the tree's center backlit shadowy forms; the fight was more terrible than she could have anticipated. In the cramped space under a holly tree's branches, Maclyn and Dierdre battled misshapen horrors that looked from the brief glimpses she got like the most awful nightmares the folks from Industrial Light and Magic could have concocted. She saw two elves she didn't recognize, stranded in the thin upper branches of the tree, fighting more of the things. She saw one of the white-eyed monsters then, and squeezed her eyes shut until she realized she couldn't wish the nightmare away. The elves in the tree were wounded and bloody—the monsters they fought appeared unscathed.
Lianne saw Maclyn bring his sword straight down on top of one monster's head in a two-handed blow that should have split the thing in half, but the monster never fell.
A scream of pure anguish drew her attention back to the treetop. One of the monsters had overcome the male elf and had severed one of his arms. It dropped like some macabre fruit to land against the tree roots. The elf screamed once more as the horror gnawed through his remaining forearm. Lianne shoved her fist against her mouth to silence her own screams; one last slash of the thing's claws and the elf's severed head hung from its grip.
The body tumbled from the tree, with unreal slowness. The golem threw the head in a lazy overhand toss that sent it soaring in a slow, graceful arc toward Lianne. As it passed beyond the spread of the holly tree, it winked out of existence as if it had never been.
Lianne stared at the spot where it disappeared and shuddered.
It was only the steady repetition of someone calling her name that brought her out of her stunned reverie.
"Lianne? Lianne? Can you hear me?" Dierdre shouted. Lianne could make out her shadowy form, back pressed against Maclyn's, keeping the monsters at bay with a steady barrage of swordstrokes.
"Maybe she ran off," Maclyn yelled. He parried a talon-strike aimed at his face and landed a stop-thrust that did no apparent damage to its victim.
"Maybe we just can't hear her because of this damned spell. I hope that's the case."
"I'm right here!" Lianne yelled from her hiding place.
None of the combatants paid her any attention.
Certain that she was exposing herself to attack by the monsters, Lianne did the bravest thing she had ever done. She stood up and ran toward the fight, again yelling, "I'm right here."
It was if she didn't exist to those battling under the tree. And that was as horrible as all the rest combined.
"Lianne," Dierdre yelled between swordstrokes, "if you're there, listen—a spell traps us in here. Look for knotted cords around this tree—probably four or five. If you—"
One monster got inside her defense, and the sound of talons raking across armor screeched through the woods.
"If you find the knots, untie them!" Dierdre yelled. "And hurry!"
Lianne heard the elves parrying claws and Maclyn's voice asking, between panted breaths, "What if she's not out there?"
She heard Dierdre answer, "Then we die."
Lianne stared at the headless, armless torso that lay under the tree, and then through the branches, at Dierdre and Mac. Then she looked up at the bleeding, exhausted elf stranded in the upper branches. The one tireless monster who was trying to dislodge her had shifted tactics and was scraping across the branch with his claws. Bits of wood flew away with every stroke. It wouldn't be long until the branch broke.
Cords? she wondered. Made into knots that I should untie?
She could not imagine what good untying knots would do—but she was willing to concede that this was not an ordinary situation, and that the rules she knew didn't apply. She ran to the periphery of the tree and scouted around the branches.
In a moment, she had located one knot. It was tied in a heavy, glossy black cord, and it wove in and out around itself half a dozen different ways. It took her a bit of fumbling even to discover where the ends had been tucked, and once she had found them, even longer to return the cord to its unknotted state.
As soon as the knot was unraveled, however, Lianne heard Maclyn yell, "There she is!" One of the monsters suddenly noticed her, too, and charged toward her. Mere inches away, it broke through the branches and was brought up short by an invisible barrier. It shrieked in frustration, and charged again.
She backed away frightened.
"Get the rest of the knots," Dierdre shouted.
"What will happen when they are untied?" Lianne asked.
Dierdre looked puzzled, then shouted, "I can't hear you."
Lianne shrugged and hurried around the periphery of the tree. A flash of red caught her eye, and she stopped. The monster that charged at her as she pulled the red cord out from under the branches sent her heart leaping into her throat, and the other creatures' incessant chittering giggles made it almost impossible to concentrate—but with trembling fingers, she managed to untangle the second knot.
"If we survive this," Dierdre suddenly remarked, "I'm going to severely damage the person responsible."
"I know how you feel," Maclyn agreed.
There was a creak, and the branch that supported the third elf sagged. "Felouen!" Maclyn yelled, "Hang on!"
"I'd figured that out already, thanks," Felouen shouted back.
Giggles grated along her nerves. Third cord, she thought, and refused to let herself consider what would happen when all the cords were unwound.
It took a bit of digging in the spot where she thought it might be, but she did locate the third cord. It was white.
She ignored the crash that indicated the branch had broken through, ignored the scream of fear and pain and the heavy thud that followed. Lianne fumbled with the complex knot and worked it loose.
"Magic works again," Dierdre muttered, and that terse statement was followed by a flash of brilliant blue light and a loud sizzling sound.
Lianne ran to the fourth quarter of the imaginary circle the unknown magician had laid out, and within seconds had discovered a twisted length of green cord. Familiar now with the permutations the knots had taken, she quickly pulled it apart.
There was a low rumble, and the air around her shimmered like air over pavement on a hot day. For an instant, the situation under the tree continued unchanged. The monsters slashed at the elves, the one who had broken the hapless Felouen loose from her tree clambered down after her, chuckling evilly. The monster that had been charging at Lianne broke free of its circle and came straight for her, and Dierdre and Maclyn fought their way toward the body of their fallen comrade.
Then, with a resounding "crack," the monsters and the dismembered remains of the dead elf vanished.
Dierdre looked around as if she couldn't believe it was over, then sagged against the tree trunk. Maclyn charged to Felouen's side.
Lianne crawled through the holly's low-hanging branches with some difficulty and joined him.
Felouen was badly hurt. She lay, unresponsive, on the woodland floor, her breathing ragged and irregular. Dark blood seeped into the fabric of her shirt, and through a tear in the cloth, Lianne could see the white gleam of ribs and the dark bubbling of a large, open wound.
"Mother!" Maclyn's voice was hoarse. He knelt beside the downed woman, probing for hidden injuries. "Hurry!"
"Do you need me to get an ambulance?" Lianne asked. She felt foolish asking that question when, looking at the woman, the answer seemed so obvious—but she wasn't dealing with humans, she reminded herself. Elves might have other ways of dealing with emergencies.
"D.D. will take care of her," Maclyn said.
Lianne watched D.D. moving around the tree toward them. Her armor flickered once, then vanished, replaced by clothes that looked like the ones the other woman wore.
D.D. bit her lip and knelt beside her son. "How bad?"
Mac's voice was without expression. "We may lose her."
The elven woman nodded and rested her hand on Felouen's shoulder. "I'm taking her back. You and Lianne find out what you need to about your child. I'll meet you in the Grove when you're done."
Maclyn did—something. He sketched a kind of arch with his fingers, anchored on one side to the holly tree. Lianne watched the air around the two elven women shift and darken.
Something about that arch made her feel queasy.
But beyond that arch were hints of unearthly beauty. Was that the elven world?
The images of wet forest and misty, enchanted grove blurred over each other and shifted disconcertingly until the teacher had a hard time looking at the Gate. D.D. pulled Felouen through, and both of them took on the same hazy, half-there appearance of the world beyond. Then Mac spoke a few quiet syllables, and they were gone.
"Come," he said, turning to Lianne. "We still have to find out about Amanda."